作为一家商业房地产企业，仲量联行（JLL）希望在商情期间从全球采购到支付端全面启用自动化系统，运用这一战略手段克服本地化与变革管理带来的挑战。
与当今众多企业IT项目一样，商业房地产企业JLL从源到付的整个流程自动化举措同样诞生于新冠疫情。
随着新冠冲击下全球各地办事处纷纷关闭，不少企业在现金流管理与监控面临严峻挑战，JLL自然也不例外。
JLL负责企业IT管理的CIO George Thomas坦言，“当时大部分大型企业都面临着类似的难题，我们也一直在观察现金的出入情况。”在他治下，JLL全球83个国家450多个办事处的数据中心、ERP系统及其他支持技术一直有条不紊地运行。
随着疫情恶化，财务系统变得越来越难以为继。“账款周围量很大，纸质支票、各系统孤岛间无法连通，再加上会计系统与人力资本管理系统已经老旧，导致公司无法实时查看整体就会账款。”更重要的是，支付审批流程迟迟得不到简化，而且公司还缺乏统一的全球跟踪机制。
在与CEO、CFO和首席采购官商谈之后，Thomas发现了新的机会，可以在JLL的ERP系统上使用AI加机器学习的组合实现从采购到付款的全流程自动化，借此提高效率并改善用户体验。凭借这一IT创新与领导力表现，JLL荣获CIO 100 IT创新与领导力大奖。
一、可见性
在制定项目时，Thomas和他的团队一直在思考，除了缩短从源到付流程周期、改善现金流可见性之外，端到端自动化还能带来哪些其他好处。
他表示，“软利益很快就被转化为硬利益，之后我们又研究了转型后需要的员工数量，发现比之前大为减少。腾出来的人手，可以处理其他真正必要、或者探索性的重要工作。”
在得到高管团队的一致认可之后，Thomas开始带领队伍着手确定宏观需求，之后“以敏捷方式在全球各地的设计研讨中进行规划。”最后，他们又在财务、采购和IT等职能部门中设立了更多运营组。
最初，JLL的目标只是在全球范围内推广标准化技术堆栈与生产流程，并通过最终调整适应各地监管需求及法律政策。（华东CIO大会、华东CIO联盟、CDLC中国数字化灯塔大会、CXO数字化研学之旅、数字化江湖-讲武堂，数字化江湖-大侠传、数字化江湖-论剑、CXO系列管理论坛（陆家嘴CXO管理论坛、宁波东钱湖CXO管理论坛等）、数字化转型网，走进灯塔工厂系列、ECIO大会等）
Thomas指出，“事后看来，如果我们能再多做点事前预习，整个流程会推进得更加顺遂。”尽管称上完美，但JLL仍然在全球22个国家/地区实现了“从采购到支付”全流程自动化，“目前技术与流程标准化比例已经接近80%。”
在设计出强大的商业案例、获得了高管团队对项目的支持和资金投入之后，Thomas发现剩下的最大挑战，就是如何在整个组织内部完成变更管理。
JLL运营部门发现，这套新流程的落地会带来不计其数的变更因素。Thomas感叹道，“我们低估了企业文化对于变更管理的影响，所以没能预留出相应的规划周期……如果之前能意识到这个问题，转型还可以推进得更快。”
除了人为因素，自动化还对应着技术变革。“我们引入了多项新技术，需要用统一的中央枢纽把它们联系起来。而所有系统间的正确同步当然需要大量测试。”虽然过程比预期略长，但运营团队并没有白白浪费时间：“我们没有等到所有22个国家/地区全部落地完成后才开始实现价值。相反，我们直接将新流程投入市场，因为我们已经在论证阶段认定新的商业案例绝对能够成功。所以一边实施、一边向其他国家推广，产生的价值回报也开始不断增加。”
二、供应与需求
自动化流程中的另一个复杂性因素来自外部。需要适应新环境的不只有JLL自己的员工和IT系统，其他供应商也需要尽快跟上。
Thomas表示，“在这样一个大项目中，我们对供应商的转型要求相对很低。”JLL需要通过新框架与供应商交换数据，因此各供应商也得为计划的落地实施留出空间。“毕竟他们还有自己的业务体系和其他客户，不可能总是把JLL的需求当作最优先事务。”
因此他建议在流程早期就将计划全面向供应商分享，明确提出转型的要求和收益，并留出充分的时间让对方适应。
但供应商的表现，往往也决定着此类自动化项目的最终命运。他回忆道，“在首步实施后，我们发现供应商的数据不够清洁。数据捕捉必须匹配一整套良好的数据质量保障计划。”
根据他在JLL“从源到付”自动化转型中总结的经验，Thomas说他在未来的自动化项目中会调整具体方法，比如多花时间了解本地化需求、快速启动变更管理流程，让文化转型与技术转型齐头并进。
虽然Thomas对整个过程抱有种种遗憾，但令人欣喜的是，转型工作在几个月后就开始产生积极成果。“在正向反馈出现后，收益很快超出了所有人的预期。这让我们有能力证明自己在市场上走得有多快，准确跟进各个国家的业务实施进度。”
在项目落地后，JLL的发票处理速度大大提升、电子支付比例显著上扬，这也进一步降低了公司运营成本。
凭借着从源到付自动化项目的成功，Thomas已经将JLL的智能自动化普及视为未来两、三年内运营团队的四大战略要务之一。其他三项分别是：启用混合工作环境、提高IT基础设施的安全性和适应性，以及提供更直观的用户体验。
在后续战略中，从源到付自动化流程也将继续贡献力量：因为无需收发纸质采访订单或发票等文档，混合工作的门槛将大为下降；而用户无需扫描文件再相互交换，因此可以轻松在屏幕上直观查看不同系统中的业务文件。
原文：
Commercial real-estate company JLL’s automation of its source-to-pay
process, like many enterprise IT projects today, had its origin in the
pandemic.
As COVID began to close offices around the world, many enterprises
faced challenges managing or monitoring cashflow, JLL among them.
“We were watching cash coming in and cash out the door, given the
situation that most large organizations were in,” says global CIO George
Thomas, who oversees enterprise IT at JLL, including data centers, ERP
systems, and other software infrastructure in support of the company’s
300-plus offices in over 80 countries around the world.
As the pace of the pandemic accelerated, it became harder for finance
systems to keep up: “There was the high volume of the accounts payable
turnover, with long processing timeframes due to paper checks, siloed
systems operating and interacting with our accounting systems and our
human capital management systems, with no real-time visibility across
the firm for accounts payable,” he says. On top of that, payment
approval processes were not streamlined and lacked a consistent global
tracking mechanism.
Working with the CEO, CFO, and chief procurement officer, Thomas
identified an opportunity to automate the source-to-pay process using
artificial intelligence and machine learning on top of JLL’s ERP systems
to deliver greater efficiency and a great user experience, a project
that has earned JLL a CIO 100 Award for IT innovation and leadership.
Visibility
As Thomas and team formulated the project, they asked themselves what
benefits end-to-end automation of the source-to-pay process might bring
besides better cycle time and better visibility into the cash flow.
George Thomas, global CIO at JLL Scott Saraceno
“The soft benefits quickly turned into hard benefits, because we then
looked at the number of people who might be required to do this, and it
was going to be significantly lower than the number of people that did
it previously,” he says. “We could move them onto other things that we
were required to do or aspire to do.”
With senior executives sold on the benefits of the project, says
Thomas, the team moved on to identifying high-level requirements, then
“detailed planning in an agile fashion across various design sessions
around the world,” and finally, release planning with more and more of
the operational groups within the finance, procurement, and IT
functions.
Initially, JLL’s goal was to standardize both the technology stack
and the business processes around the world, although in the end some
local customizations were required to accommodate regulatory needs or
compliance with government policies.
“In hindsight, had we done a little bit more work up-front to
understand those things a little better, we would have prevented some
undo-redo work,” Thomas says. Nevertheless, in the 22 countries where
JLL has automated source-to-pay, “We have standardized the tech and the
process almost 80% of the way.”
With a strong business case, securing executive buy-in and funding
for the project was relatively easy, and the biggest challenge turned
out to be in managing change across the organization, he says.
The amount of change that JLL’s operational units needed to go
through to perform the new processes presented a challenge. “The
underestimation of that cultural aspect of change management that we
needed to bring into the planning cycle, … if there was better
appreciation for that, we would have probably been done much faster,” he
says.
In addition to the human factors, automation also meant technology
change. “We introduced several new technologies that needed to connect
to one central hub, which did require an intense level of testing to
properly sync all of the systems up,” he says. While that made the
process a little longer, the team lost no time in realizing value from
the project: “We didn’t wait till all 22 countries were implemented to
start extracting value. We put it into a market, we understood that the
business case had legs to stand on, then we went on to roll out into the
other countries, so value was being added along the way.”
Supply and demand
Another factor complicating the automation process: It wasn’t just
JLL employees and IT systems that had to adapt; there are demands on
suppliers, too.
“In a program like this, we have a tendency to ignore the supplier
transformation that’s required,” says Thomas. JLL must exchange data
with its suppliers through the new framework, meaning allowance must be
made for them to plan and implement the program, too. “We may not always
be the highest priority for them because they have a range of programs
that they need to complete for their corporation as well,” he warns.
He recommends being transparent with suppliers early in the process,
setting out the requirements and the benefits, and allowing time for
them to adapt.
Suppliers can make or break automation projects like this in other
ways, too. “After the first implementation, we understood that supplier
data is not always clean,” he says. “Data capture will need a good data
quality program around it.”
Based on his experience gained from automating source-to-pay at JLL,
Thomas says he would take a slightly different approach to future
automation projects, taking the time to understand localization needs
earlier in the process, and kickstarting the change management process
much sooner, so that it advances hand in hand with the technology
changes.
Although Thomas dwells on delays caused by some early decisions, he
says it only took a few months for the transformation to start producing
results. “Once we started seeing them, it surpassed anyone’s
expectations. That then allowed us to demonstrate that we needed to go
faster in these other markets, and it was quite easy for us to
fast-track the implementation of the other countries.”
As a result of the project, JLL is seeing faster invoice processing
and a greater volume of payments being made electronically, further
reducing cost.
Based on the success of the source-to-pay automation project, Thomas
has made extending the use of intelligent automation at JLL one of four
strategic imperatives for his team over the next two or three years. The
other three are enabling a hybrid working environment; making IT
infrastructure secure yet adaptable; and delivering an intuitive user
experience for employees and clients.
The automation of source-to-pay plays into some of these as well:
Hybrid working is much simpler when you no longer need physical access
to documents such as purchase orders or invoices, while a user
experience that doesn’t involve scanning papers and cross-referencing
files in multiple systems on-screen is also more likely to be intuitive.
本文主要内容转载（或原作者）Peter Sayer，仅供广大读者参考，如有侵犯您的知识产权或者权益，请联系我提供证据，我会予以删除。
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